Dave Burggraff, Executive Assistant Pastor, has been all over the map:  Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Florida, and North Carolina—not to mention many overseas destinations!  But his faith never moves; it has found a home in Christ.

Pastor Burggraff and his wife, Lucy, grew up Roman Catholic in the great white north of Minnesota, but they never heard the gospel until after they were married. In fact, they are both saved today because a preacher’s car broke down near a business owned by Pastor Burggraff’s father.

“My father owned an automotive repair garage on the main highway in our Minnesota town. One day, a Baptist preacher’s car breaks down right in front. While my father was repairing the car, my mother was working in the office as a bookkeeper. That afternoon the preacher led my mother to the Lord.” 

“The preacher set up an appointment to meet with my father two weeks later. My dad had invited all these friends and family to come as well…for support, you know! Instead, they all got saved. In fact, in just two months’ time, eighteen members of my family got saved.” 

Pastor Burggraff and Lucy were invited home the following Mother’s Day. “My mom pressured us to go to church, so we decided to humor her. It was a different church than we had attended as children, and it was the first time I had ever heard the gospel message. Lucy and I gave our lives to Christ right then, and that started our life journey.”

A chemical engineer by training, Pastor Burggraff was in the third year of his degree program when he heard God’s call to take a different path.

“One afternoon I was reading through the books of First and Second Samuel in the Bible.  About two-thirds of the way through, I began to realize that it would be better for me to spend my life doing this…understanding and teaching this Word…than what I had originally chosen.” 

When asked to describe what he means by hearing the call of God, Pastor Burggraff is quick to point out that he is not speaking of some supernatural encounter. “Most people think of a call as some mystical thing, or try to find some parallel in the life of a Biblical character such as Gideon.  However, First Timothy 3:1 says, ‘if a man desires the office of a bishop…he desires a good thing.’”  In Greek, unlike English, he explains, there are many more verb tenses to describe action.  The first word that is translated “desire” is a middle verb tense that carries a connotation of agency within a person, such as: “I hit myself with the ball.” 

“As a person is under the preaching and teaching of God’s word,” he said, “an internal passion grows, and I aspire to do that particular thing.”  He said the second word translated “desire” carries the meaning of pursuing something at all cost.  “So in my particular case I aspired to teach the word of God and I was willing to pursue the goal no matter the cost.”

Pastor Burggraff finished seminary at Calvary Baptist Seminary in Philadelphia and was asked to pastor a small, struggling church.  He and Lucy were there for seven years and the church blossomed.  Eventually they returned home to Minnesota for a few years.  It was there he received a call from his old alma mater Calvary Baptist. “They asked if I would teach theology—which had always been my ambition. So Lucy and I went first to Dallas Theological Seminary where I finished my Doctorate in Theology—then we headed back to Philadelphia.”

Pastor Burggraff spent seventeen years there as a professor, dean, and later as president.  “We were having a wonderful time, starting seminaries overseas, and starting new ministries. But, after seventeen years, I was starting to develop a burden for incoming students. We were not seeing the level of passion for ministry we had seen in years past and I thought we needed to do something different on the college level.”

About that time, the president of Clearwater Christian College in Florida approached Pastor Burggraff about being a theologian; a vice-president who would serve as a theological rudder and college chaplain. It was a good move. He loved the role: writing and teaching students, hoping to ignite passion for God’s Word in the next generation of Christian pastors and laypeople.

“I had actually planned to stay there forever, teaching and writing, when I was invited to come and speak at Colonial during the Summer Series for a couple of years.  Stephen (Davey) had been looking for an executive assistant, and the church elders had actually been working on profiling and designing the position for four or five years.  When they asked us, Lucy and I prayed for over a year before we agreed to come.  You see, I’m actually a pastor at heart who happens to teach; and we had missed local church ministry.”

According to Pastor Burggraff, the position of Executive Assistant Pastor is similar to a Chief of Staff in the business world. He describes it as being a pastor to Colonial’s pastoral staff, handling many of the administrative duties on a day-to-day basis. 

“My job is to help free the Senior Pastor so that he can do what he alone has been called to do at Colonial…to minister the Word. The rest of us do that as well, but Stephen’s responsibility is tremendous. Until you are a pastor it is hard to understand the amount of time that it takes to put together a particular series or sermon.  Stephen is a wonderful example and model of true theological preaching.” 

As he looks back over his years in ministry, Pastor Burggraff said that he wouldn’t really change anything, but that he would give one piece of advice to his younger self: “Stay with the Lord one day at a time. The things God will call you to do will look overwhelming and too demanding all at once—but they can be accomplished by taking a step at a time looking to God each day.”

The Burggraffs live in Apex and have three grown sons, two daughters-in-law and five grandchildren.